BERLIN, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- The meteorological winter in 2019/2020 was the second warmest in Germany since regular weather measurements began in 1881, the National Meteorological Service (DWD) has announced.
At 4.1 degrees Celsius, the average temperature in winter 2019/2020 was 3.9 degrees above the level for the internationally valid reference period from 1961 to 1990, according to DWD's first evaluations of data from around 2,000 measuring stations.
Only the winter of 2006/2007 in Germany was warmer with an average temperature of 4.4 degrees, the DWD said on Friday.
The winter 2019/2020 was "also extremely mild in almost all of Europe," the DWD noted. It was due to cold weather in the northern hemisphere, which constantly regenerated in the northern Canada-Greenland region. At the same time, a strong wind band repeatedly sent low-pressure systems over Iceland to northern Russia.
"As a result, a large part of Europe was permanently in a strong, extremely mild southwest current," which caused a "total failure" of the winter in many places in Germany, DWD noted.
According to DWD, there was not much snow in the winter which was unusual but at the same it was too wet. At around 225 liters per square meter, the amount of precipitation exceeded the comparable figure of 181 liters by about 23 percent.
"The frequent rainfall was very welcome to further replenish the soil, which was still dry at the beginning of the winter," it noted.
DWD recorded often spring-like temperatures of over 15 degrees. The highest temperature measured in Germany during the winter 2019/2020 was 21.5 degrees, while the coldest temperature was minus 14.7 degrees.
